At the kitchen stairs Mahailey met him in gleeful excitement. “Lord ‘a’ mercy, Mr. Claude, I can’t git the storm door open. We’re snowed in fas’.” She looked like a tramp woman, in a jacket patched with many colours, her head tied up in an old black “fascinator,” with ravelled yarn4 hanging down over her face like wild locks of hair. She kept this costume for calamitous5 occasions; appeared in it when the water-pipes were frozen and burst, or when spring storms flooded the coops and drowned her young chickens.
The storm door opened outward. Claude put his shoulder to it and pushed it a little way. Then, with Mahailey’s fireshovel he dislodged enough snow to enable him to force back the door. Dan came tramping in his stocking-feet across the kitchen to his boots, which were still drying behind the stove. “She’s sure a bad one, Claude,” he remarked, blinking.
“Yes. I guess we won’t try to go out till after breakfast. We’ll have to dig our way to the barn, and I never thought to bring the shovels7 up last night.”
“Th’ ole snow shovels is in the cellar. I’ll git ’em.”
“Not now, Mahailey. Give us our breakfast before you do anything else.”
Mrs. Wheeler came down, pinning on her little shawl, her shoulders more bent8 than usual. “Claude,” she said fearfully, “the cedars in the front yard are all but covered. Do you suppose our cattle could be buried?”
He laughed. “No, Mother. The cattle have been moving around all night, I expect.”
When the two men started out with the wooden snow shovels, Mrs. Wheeler and Mahailey stood in the doorway9, watching them. For a short distance from the house the path they dug was like a tunnel, and the white walls on either side were higher than their heads. On the breast of the hill the snow was not so deep, and they made better headway. They had to fight through a second heavy drift before they reached the barn, where they went in and warmed themselves among the horses and cows. Dan was for getting next a warm cow and beginning to milk.
“Not yet,” said Claude. “I want to have a look at the hogs10 before we do anything here.”
The hog-house was built down in a draw behind the barn. When Claude reached the edge of the gully, blown almost bare, he could look about him. The draw was full of snow, smooth . . . except in the middle, where there was a rumpled11 depression, resembling a great heap of tumbled bed-linen.
Dan gasped12. “God a’ mighty13, Claude, the roof’s fell in! Them hogs’ll be smothered14.”
“They will if we don’t get at them pretty quick. Run to the house and tell Mother. Mahailey will have to milk this morning, and get back here as fast as you can.”
The roof was a flat thatch15, and the weight of the snow had been too much for it. Claude wondered if he should have put on a new thatch that fall; but the old one wasn’t leaky, and had seemed strong enough.
When Dan got back they took turns, one going ahead and throwing out as much snow as he could, the other handling the snow that fell back. After an hour or so of this work, Dan leaned on his shovel6.
“We’ll never do it, Claude. Two men couldn’t throw all that snow out in a week. I’m about all in.”
“Well, you can go back to the house and sit by the fire,” Claude called fiercely. He had taken off his coat and was working in his shirt and sweater. The sweat was rolling from his face, his back and arms ached, and his hands, which he couldn’t keep dry, were blistered16. There were thirty-seven hogs in the hog-house.
Dan sat down in the hole. “Maybe if I could git a drink of water, I could hold on a-ways,” he said dejectedly.
It was past noon when they got into the shed; a cloud of steam rose, and they heard grunts17. They found the pigs all lying in a heap at one end, and pulled the top ones off alive and squealing18. Twelve hogs, at the bottom of the pile, had been suffocated19. They lay there wet and black in the snow, their bodies warm and smoking, but they were dead; there was no mistaking that.
Mrs. Wheeler, in her husband’s rubber boots and an old overcoat, came down with Mahailey to view the scene of disaster.
“You ought to git right at them hawgs an’ butcher ’em today,” Mahailey called down to the men. She was standing20 on the edge of the draw, in her patched jacket and ravelled hood21. Claude, down in the hole, brushed the sleeve of his sweater across his streaming face. “Butcher them?” he cried indignantly. “I wouldn’t butcher them if I never saw meat again.”
“You ain’t a-goin’ to let all that good hawg-meat go to wase, air you, Mr. Claude?” Mahailey pleaded. “They didn’t have no sickness nor nuthin’. Only you’ll have to git right at ’em, or the meat won’t be healthy.”
“It wouldn’t be healthy for me, anyhow. I don’t know what I will do with them, but I’m mighty sure I won’t butcher them.”
“Don’t bother him, Mahailey,” Mrs. Wheeler cautioned her. “He’s tired, and he has to fix some place for the live hogs.”
“I know he is, mam, but I could easy cut up one of them hawgs myself. I butchered my own little pig onct, in Virginia. I could save the hams, anyways, and the spare-ribs. We ain’t had no spare-ribs for ever so long.”
What with the ache in his back and his chagrin22 at losing the pigs, Claude was feeling desperate. “Mother,” he shouted, “if you don’t take Mahailey into the house, I’ll go crazy!”
That evening Mrs. Wheeler asked him how much the twelve hogs would have been worth in money. He looked a little startled.
“Oh, I don’t know exactly; three hundred dollars, anyway.”
“Would it really be as much as that? I don’t see how we could have prevented it, do you?” Her face looked troubled.
Claude went to bed immediately after supper, but he had no sooner stretched his aching body between the sheets than he began to feel wakeful. He was humiliated23 at losing the pigs, because they had been left in his charge; but for the loss in money, about which even his mother was grieved, he didn’t seem to care. He wondered whether all that winter he hadn’t been working himself up into a childish contempt for money-values.
When Ralph was home at Christmas time, he wore on his little finger a heavy gold ring, with a diamond as big as a pea, surrounded by showy grooves24 in the metal. He admitted to Claude that he had won it in a poker25 game. Ralph’s hands were never free from automobile26 grease — they were the red, stumpy kind that couldn’t be kept clean. Claude remembered him milking in the barn by lantern light, his jewel throwing off jabbing sparkles of colour, and his fingers looking very much like the teats of the cow. That picture rose before him now, as a symbol of what successful farming led to.
The farmer raised and took to market things with an intrinsic value; wheat and corn as good as could be grown anywhere in the world, hogs and cattle that were the best of their kind. In return he got manufactured articles of poor quality; showy furniture that went to pieces, carpets and draperies that faded, clothes that made a handsome man look like a clown. Most of his money was paid out for machinery27, — and that, too, went to pieces. A steam thrasher didn’t last long; a horse outlived three automobiles28.
Claude felt sure that when he was a little boy and all the neighbours were poor, they and their houses and farms had more individuality. The farmers took time then to plant fine cottonwood groves29 on their places, and to set osage orange hedges along the borders of their fields. Now these trees were all being cut down and grubbed up. Just why, nobody knew; they impoverished30 the land . . . they made the snow drift . . . nobody had them any more. With prosperity came a kind of callousness31; everybody wanted to destroy the old things they used to take pride in. The orchards32, which had been nursed and tended so carefully twenty years ago, were now left to die of neglect. It was less trouble to run into town in an automobile and buy fruit than it was to raise it.
The people themselves had changed. He could remember when all the farmers in this community were friendly toward each other; now they were continually having lawsuits33. Their sons were either stingy and grasping, or extravagant34 and lazy, and they were always stirring up trouble. Evidently, it took more intelligence to spend money than to make it.
When he pondered upon this conclusion, Claude thought of the Erlichs. Julius could go abroad and study for his doctor’s degree, and live on less than Ralph wasted every year. Ralph would never have a profession or a trade, would never do or make anything the world needed.
Nor did Claude find his own outlook much better. He was twenty-one years old, and he had no skill, no training, — no ability that would ever take him among the kind of people he admired. He was a clumsy, awkward farmer boy, and even Mrs. Erlich seemed to think the farm the best place for him. Probably it was; but all the same he didn’t find this kind of life worth the trouble of getting up every morning. He could not see the use of working for money, when money brought nothing one wanted. Mrs. Erlich said it brought security. Sometimes he thought this security was what was the matter with everybody; that only perfect safety was required to kill all the best qualities in people and develop the mean ones.
Ernest, too, said “it’s the best life in the world, Claude.”
But if you went to bed defeated every night, and dreaded35 to wake in the morning, then clearly it was too good a life for you. To be assured, at his age, of three meals a day and plenty of sleep, was like being assured of a decent burial. Safety, security; if you followed that reasoning out, then the unborn, those who would never be born, were the safest of all; nothing could happen to them.
Claude knew, and everybody else knew, seemingly, that there was something wrong with him. He had been unable to conceal36 his discontent. Mr. Wheeler was afraid he was one of those visionary fellows who make unnecessary difficulties for themselves and other people. Mrs. Wheeler thought the trouble with her son was that he had not yet found his Saviour37. Bayliss was convinced that his brother was a moral rebel, that behind his reticence38 and his guarded manner he concealed39 the most dangerous opinions. The neighbours liked Claude, but they laughed at him, and said it was a good thing his father was well fixed40. Claude was aware that his energy, instead of accomplishing something, was spent in resisting unalterable conditions, and in unavailing efforts to subdue41 his own nature. When he thought he had at last got himself in hand, a moment would undo42 the work of days; in a flash he would be transformed from a wooden post into a living boy. He would spring to his feet, turn over quickly in bed, or stop short in his walk, because the old belief flashed up in him with an intense kind of hope, an intense kind of pain, — the conviction that there was something splendid about life, if he could but find it.
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1
cedars
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| 雪松，西洋杉( cedar的名词复数 ) | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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yarn
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| n.纱，纱线，纺线；奇闻漫谈，旅行轶事 | |
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calamitous
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| adj.灾难的，悲惨的；多灾多难；惨重 | |
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6
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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7
shovels
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| n.铲子( shovel的名词复数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份v.铲子( shovel的第三人称单数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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8
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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hogs
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| n.（尤指喂肥供食用的）猪( hog的名词复数 )；（供食用的）阉公猪；彻底地做某事；自私的或贪婪的人 | |
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11
rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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13
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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14
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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15
thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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16
blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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17
grunts
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说； 石鲈 | |
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squealing
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| v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的现在分词 ) | |
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19
suffocated
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| （使某人）窒息而死( suffocate的过去式和过去分词 )； （将某人）闷死； 让人感觉闷热； 憋气 | |
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20
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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21
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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23
humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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24
grooves
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| n.沟( groove的名词复数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏v.沟( groove的第三人称单数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏 | |
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25
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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26
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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29
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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30
impoverished
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| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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31
callousness
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32
orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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33
lawsuits
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| n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 ) | |
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34
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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35
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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36
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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37
saviour
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| n.拯救者，救星 | |
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38
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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39
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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40
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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41
subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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42
undo
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| vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销 | |
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